


inhale, exhale, and reset

by mapped



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Anal Sex, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Fix-It, Love Confessions, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Finale, Post-Series, Reconciliation, Reunions, Treasure Island? What Treasure Island?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 17:26:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10667364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapped/pseuds/mapped
Summary: After he is reunited with Thomas, James continues to watch more than one point in space at the same time.





	inhale, exhale, and reset

**Author's Note:**

> I just want them all to be happy together and cuddle! It only took me like, what, 8k to get there?

It was a week before the initial bliss of their reunion became less all-consuming, and the idea of watching Thomas till the fields for a moment longer became intolerable to James.

For himself, he would have been able to accept a life sentence in that place, to atone for all the blood that he had spilled. But Thomas had done nothing to deserve this fate.

And so they had led the other prisoners in a revolt, and when they had secured control of the place, and they had made plans for how all the prisoners might leave and start new lives elsewhere without drawing attention to themselves, James wrote to Madi. He addressed the letter to Eme in Nassau, hoping it would get passed onto Madi that way, and then he went into Savannah to post the letter.

* * *

“You cannot begin to guess how often I dreamt of you when I was in Bedlam,” Thomas said, as they buried the bodies of the guards who had been killed during the revolt. “Charging in and slitting the throats of all the so-called physicians. Punching the callous visitors who came to gawk at the wretched inmates.” He paused, leaning against his shovel, and then smiled slowly. “Wrenching the bars from my cell with your bare hands.“ James couldn’t help but smile back, though part of him was still ashamed that he did not do these things that Thomas was describing, that Thomas had had to suffer three years in Bedlam before being transferred to this plantation.

Thomas seemed to surmise what James was thinking. He reached out and touched James’ hand. “You could not have stormed Bedlam, my love, no matter how much either of us wished it,” he said. “Besides, you already know that you did save me. I was hanging onto the very edge of the precipice, dangling above the chasm of despair, but you killed my father and I was allowed to come here, instead.” He lifted James’ hand to his lips, pressed a warm kiss to the centre of James’ palm. “You saved me,” he murmured, and James would never tire of hearing those words, when he had spent the past decade repeating this dull, bitter chant to himself: _I didn’t save him._

Thomas dropped James’ hand. He went back to shovelling dirt and continued: “Here, the treatment is much less cruel, so I entertained fewer fantasies of you rescuing me, but nevertheless, I am glad to finally be truly, properly free.”

They went and played chess, afterwards, in the office that used to be Oglethorpe’s. They had left Oglethorpe alive and let him go, on condition that he never speak of what had happened here, nor keep unpaid labourers again. He had pissed himself with fear, James holding a dagger to his throat and whispering in his ear about the terrible, terrible things that Captain Flint had done in the past to those who crossed him.

The sunbeams through the window lit Thomas’ hair, made it as gold as a beach James had seen once. After their game of chess, which Thomas lost, as he usually did, they fucked against the bookshelf, fingers lacing over gilded book spines. Thomas poured delicious words into him, a Latin poem written by a male poet addressed to a male lover, about his honey-sweet eyes and a harvest of kisses thicker than ripe ears of corn, and James laughed and gasped and shuddered, rolling his hips back to meet Thomas’ thrusts, baring his neck to the brush of Thomas’ beard. The first few nights they had spent together in London, James had at once been irritated and wildly aroused by Thomas’ ostentatious habit of reciting Greek and Latin in bed. _Noblemen_ , James had thought, half-scornful and half-fond, and then viciously retaliated with his own armoury of quotations while Thomas had sighed and groaned and melted in his arms, and the irritation had dissipated until only arousal was left.

Now he marvelled at Thomas’ mind, how so many foreign verses and passages were not forgotten even after three years of maltreatment in Bedlam and a decade with few books in his possession. But whenever Thomas did falter, hesitating over gaps in his memory, it only endeared him to James all the more, and James would kiss him until there was only shared breath and lips speaking love without words.

They sat on the floor by the bookshelf when they were spent, James’ head nestled in the crook of Thomas’ shoulder. James traced Thomas’ collarbone with idle fingers, and wondered whether Madi would be with Silver when she came. If she came.

* * *

Madi did come, but not with Silver.

James opened his door to her knocking. Her skin was aglow in torchlight, her eyes ablaze with joy, and she threw her arms around him. He welcomed her embrace, breathed her in, remembering that time he had seen Silver and her clutch at each other just like this.

“He really did not kill you,” she said, laying her head on his shoulder. “I was not sure if I believed him.”

“I thought you might be suspicious,” James said. “Which is why I wrote to you.” He would have suspected Silver too, were he Madi. But he was not Madi. He felt the way his trust for Silver enwrapped his heart even now, warm and soft as a velvet pouch cocooning a fortune of gems. Even with all that Silver had done, that trust remained.

“And because you have a place for my people,” Madi said, stepping back, and James finally saw Julius flanking Madi, and several other men holding torches.

“Yes,” James said. “This place.”

Thomas came up behind him, sliding arms around his waist and nuzzling his ear, and James denied the instinct to push Thomas away, to tell him _Not in front of all these people_.

“Thomas, this is Madi, princess of the Maroons. Madi, this is Thomas, my”—he glanced sideways at Thomas’ eyes, the gentle curious blue of them, and he swallowed the word _friend_ —“husband.”

Madi quirked her brow and smiled while Thomas made a small noise of surprise, his arms squeezing tight around James. Just yesterday Thomas had been reminiscing about his wedding day, how beautiful Miranda had looked, how the future had held nothing but promise. James wished he’d been there to see it, and Thomas had kissed him and said, “Isn’t it strange how women wear wedding rings but men do not? I have nothing to remember her by. They would have taken it away from me in Bedlam, admittedly, but I still _feel_ married, and it would be good to have _something_ —”

James had just taken one of the two rings he wore and grasped Thomas’ left hand, slipping the ring onto Thomas’ ring finger. It was nothing like a wedding band. The thick black hoop of it was studded with gold, and it had a large square silver bezel, lightly engraved. He had taken that ring from one of his earliest prizes; it had been with him through so many trials and tribulations. He didn’t let himself think too hard about what he meant by the act of presenting Thomas with it. As Thomas said, men didn’t wear wedding rings. But James had given Thomas that ring, and it adorned Thomas’ finger now.

Thomas let go of James and bowed slightly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Your Royal Highness,” he said.

“Please, call me Madi.”

They arranged for rooms for everybody; in the morning they would tour the estate grounds and judge the adequacy of the site as a new camp for the Maroons.

When James showed Madi to her room, Madi caught his wrist. “Flint,” she said, and James did not bother to correct her. He had once thought that he could set Flint aside and return him to the sea, but he was beginning to learn to live with the fact that Flint would always be a part of him. It was while he had been Flint that he had met two very remarkable people who had understood him, connected with him, and desired his company. There was something worthy about Flint, too, after all. “I am so glad to see you are well, and happy, and married.”

Madi’s eyes were sad.

“And you?” James said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Are you well?” _Are you married?_

“You are wondering about John Silver, are you not?”

“Yes,” James confessed.

“I could not forgive him,” Madi said. “He told me he had known that Thomas was alive since before the Spanish invaded Nassau. He had been planning to betray us for so long, and then he had imprisoned you in this place, where you were as good as enslaved. He never really saw it as his war—he saw it as your war, most of all, even when it became my war as much as yours. But though the war was not his, he chose to end it for both of us. He did not allow us the liberty of our own choices. He does not understand what the value of freedom is, and I _cannot_ forgive a man like that.”

James’ heart thudded. Madi’s eyes shone in the light of his lantern. He had prophesied it, that Madi might not forgive Silver, but to hear that it was true and to imagine Silver’s grief still pierced him to the core. He understood it, he had predicted it, but he did not want it.

“I could not have been kept here against my will,” James said, quietly. “I think Silver knew that.”

Madi glared at him. “Are you defending him?” she said, cutlass-sharp.

“I am not saying you should forgive him,” James said, hurriedly. “You are right to be angry.”

Madi’s keen gaze did not waver from James’ face. “I have been talking to Julius,” she said, eventually. “I have come to see that our war was futile, and that we would have lost much more than we would have gained.”

“I have also come to see as much,” James said.

He had been the pragmatist, once, a decade ago, but now that he was with Thomas again, he saw how much he had changed. He had spent hours talking to Thomas about his strategy for the war that had been extinguished by Silver, recounting the defeats and the victories that had already passed, and then, in the dying dusk light, Thomas had said, “I think Lieutenant McGraw would have had a great deal to say about the inadvisability of your war.”

It had been quite a shock to James.

“Even so,” Madi said, “I cannot forgive John for not letting _us_ choose. For planning the end of the war behind our backs for weeks. How could I ever put my trust in him again?”

Her lip trembled. James cradled the nape of her neck and kissed her forehead, looked into her brown eyes. “Did you tell him you were coming here?”

“Yes,” Madi said. “But I told him not to follow. I said I had no intention of forgiving him. I also have no intention of _staying_ here.”

“But—you _are_ considering relocating your people here, aren’t you?” James asked, confused.

“Yes,” Madi said. “At least those who do not object to leaving the island behind. I do not know for how much longer the island will remain safe, now that its location is no secret. But this place, it is not known—and those few who do know it, know it as a plantation for prisoners from England. It is not much safer, but it _is_ safer. And we will be able to build a bigger community here and aid runaways from the Carolina colonies.”

“But you won’t stay?”

“No. I believe I will leave Julius in charge here, once we have settled everybody. My mother, too, will be here to look after everything.”

“What are _you_ going to do?”

“I am ready for a different life,” Madi said. “I would like to see more of the world. What will you and Thomas do?”

“Thomas wants to go back to civilisation,” James said. “I have my doubts about it, but I will go with him.”

“Would you and your husband mind if I come along?” Madi asked.

“I don’t think he would mind,” James said, smiling, cheered by the thought that he would see Madi and Thomas get to know each other. “And I certainly don’t mind.”

He bade her good night, and made to leave her to her rest, but she grasped his sleeve, prevented him from going.

“You know, John told me that in the last moments before he left you, you were not the man he knew. You were somebody else, somebody he did not recognise, somebody from the past. He had unmade Flint, he said.” Madi’s eyes glinted. “But I do not see anybody different. You are the same man I have always known.”

* * *

James had wanted to teach. Teaching Silver how to fight and not die had made him realise how much he _enjoyed_ teaching, and he seemed to be fairly good at it: Silver wasn’t dead yet. Not that he had any evidence of that, not having seen Silver in over a year.

But teaching at the Boston Latin School didn’t feel _satisfying_. He had been doing it for months now. The pupils were the sons of the Boston elite, and while they deserved a sound education and James was providing that, he could not help but feel that he could be doing _more_.

“We were going to change the world,” James said, as he shaved off pieces of a carrot into the pot of boiling water. “And now I’m just teaching some rich snobby children Latin.” He hacked at the carrot with his knife.

Madi was writing at her desk in the corner. “You’re earning a fine salary,” she commented. “What would you rather be doing?”

“I don’t know,” James said, frustrated. “That’s the problem. I feel like… I had _purpose_. For ten years I was driven by something, I always had a goal in sight, there were always obstacles to surmount. And now I’m… aimless. Adrift.” He vehemently sliced some cabbage, and heard the clatter of Thomas’ feet coming down the stairs.

“If it makes you feel any better, I am beginning to feel quite restless as well,” Thomas said, draping an arm around James’ shoulder. “After ten years of isolation, I thought I would be gratified simply to be back among society. And while I _am_ enjoying editing _The Boston News-letter_ , I cannot help but feel as though I was made for more than this.”

Madi looked up and lifted her brow at them. “You do realise you are two white men with sufficient income at your disposal?” she said, shaking her head. “You have the means and ability to do whatever you want.”

She returned to her writing.

James scrubbed a hand through his hair sheepishly. “You’re right,” he acknowledged, then murmured, more quietly, a private commiseration with Thomas: “But… what exactly is it that we want?” He leaned back against the solid warmth of Thomas’ body, nudged Thomas’ cheek with the side of his head.

“I don’t know, my love, but may we devise a solution before we exasperate Madi so much that she leaves us pair of hopeless fools for some wiser companion.” Thomas kissed his hair, then called to Madi: “How’s the writing going, dear?”

“I believe I am nearly done with this story,” Madi said. Her quill ceased its scratching. “Do you truly think that people will read it?”

Thomas crossed the room to her. “From what you have shared with us, you are a brilliant writer,” he said, massaging Madi’s shoulders. “People will read it, and they will adore it.” Madi tilted her head upwards as she regarded him with bright affection, her shoulders relaxing into his touch. It was a sight that made James’ heart soar like sails unfurling in the wind.

He chucked the slivers of cabbage into the pot and stirred it. Then he went over to the writing desk and bent to kiss Madi’s cheek. She grinned at him, and he waved his wooden spoon about emphatically. “He’s right, you know. Forget Cervantes. Your name will make its mark on the literary world.”

* * *

“Madeleine Scott.”

It was Silver at the door. Silver, with his hair blowing in the wind. Silver, wearing the same fucking faded blue jacket. Silver, his chapped lips framed by a dark moustache and beard, and his eyes blue as the sea that still washed through every single one of James’ thoughts. He seemed to have emerged right out of a memory, unchanged by the past two years. A crutch under his arm. A book in his hand.

“I believe she lives here, doesn’t she?” Silver asked, brandishing the book like a weapon. Like the pistol he’d aimed at James’ heart, once. “The author of this masterpiece?”

Madi’s first novel, published to great acclaim. She was writing her second, now.

Silver’s eyes were intense. James wanted to flinch from them more than he ever did from any pistol. He wanted to flinch from them, and he wanted to dive into them and swim in them and never, ever resurface.

“How did you find us?” James said.

And then something—some _one_ —collided with his back. “Mr McGraw, who’s that?”

James turned around to a head of curly mouse brown hair at his chest height and round hazel eyes. Theodore, ever the most inquisitive one. “An old friend,” James answered. “I’d be grateful if you could find Miss Scott and tell him that John’s here.”

Theodore ran off.

James looked back at Silver, whose mouth was hanging open. “You have a _child_?”

“Well,” James said, shifting uncomfortably in the doorway. “It’s a long story.”

He saw Silver’s eyes widen some more at something behind him, and he turned around again to find Daniel and Simon both standing there. They could never bloody sit still for a minute.

“What the—” Silver seemed to have the sense to bite off the obscenities that had clearly been about to issue from his lips.

“He looks a bit of an unsavoury character, don’t he?” Daniel piped up.

“Daniel, don’t be impolite,” James said, gently. “Mr Silver is a perfectly reputable fellow.”

Daniel frowned. “I’m just stating the facts, ain’t I? He looks rougher than some folks who were in the Almshouse with me.”

Theodore came running back down the stairs. “Miss Scott says she doesn’t wanna come down to see John,” Theodore reported. “Says she’s busy.”

Three more heads poked round the wall at the end of the hallway. James turned and looked at Silver, who was looking absolutely _aghast_ with bafflement at this point. “Listen, this isn’t a good time,” James said. “I have to take care of all the boys. Can you come back in the evening, after supper?”

“All right,” Silver said, heavily. “I’ll be back.” His eyes were bullet-like, somehow. James gripped the doorframe, acutely aware all of a sudden of how short his breath was, and how quick the rise and fall of Silver’s chest was, too. He noticed, then, Silver’s necklace, something new that he had never seen Silver wear before. Silver was not wholly unchanged, after all. The pendant was carved in the shape of a feather, and it lay between Silver’s clavicles, and James couldn’t—couldn’t look away.

Thankfully, Silver swung around on his crutch, and stalked off.

James shut the door and leaned back against it, contemplating the half-dozen children standing in the hallway. _Fuck._

* * *

Night had fallen, and James had finished reading another book of the _Odyssey_ to Nicholas and Ernest and Theodore in the West Room. He went to each of their beds, checked that they were tucked in. Theodore asked him for a kiss, so he leant down and kissed Theodore’s forehead. “Is he actually gonna go down to the Underworld?” Theodore mumbled.

“You’ll find out tomorrow, won’t you?” James said, ruffling Theodore’s hair. “Sleep well.”

“I might dream of ghosts,” Theodore said, sounding quite eager at the prospect, and James chuckled.

 _You and me both,_ he thought, except he wasn’t excited in the least. “You’re even braver than Odysseus,” James said. He patted Theodore’s head, and Theodore’s eyes drooped.

James took the lamp in the room with him as he left. He looked into the other boys’ room, the East Room, where Thomas was still reading, with frequent interruptions from Daniel, who was ridiculously chatty even at this hour, when Simon and Christopher looked halfway asleep. Daniel was an endless font of criticisms, always pointing out things he would do better than the hero.

Thomas looked up briefly from his book and met James’ eyes, and they smiled at each other, and James thought he might just gather the strength to face this night, if he could absorb the radiant power of Thomas’ smile. He let himself linger in the threshold for a minute or two, watching Thomas read, bathing in the deep, clear lake that was Thomas’ voice.

Then he went to Madi’s room. She was sitting at her vanity, oiling her scalp. “Are you sure you don’t want to see him?” James asked.

“ _You_ want to see him,” Madi said. “And I do not fault you for that. But I made my decision when I left him on the island.”

“He came all the way here,” James said. “To us. Don’t you want to hear what he has to say?”

“I’ve heard everything he has to say,” Madi said. She slanted her gaze at him through her mirror. “You though. You have not. You were never allowed to make your own choice about him. He put you in chains and left you. And I believe you want to make your own choice, at last.”

“And what choice do you think that’ll be?” James asked.

“A better choice than the one he made,” Madi replied.

“You still love him, don’t you?”

Madi was silent, rubbing the oil into her skin.

James left her alone.

Thomas had finally managed to persuade Daniel to go to sleep, it seemed. The East Room was dark. James made his way further down the corridor to Thomas’ bedroom. Most nights, that room lay empty as Thomas slept in James’ room, but they kept separate bedrooms for the veneer of propriety. There was a guest room, too, that had never been used. Tonight, Thomas was in his own bedroom, untying his cravat. James set his lamp down, took Thomas’ hands in his and kissed the knuckles.

Thomas’ breath hitched. “James,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“I don’t know,” James said. He was nervous, he was nauseous, he could feel a familiar anger frothing inside him. The way he had always felt around Silver. Too _much_ , too alive, a searing, blinding feeling like he was being eaten whole by the sun.

And Silver wasn’t even _here_ , yet.

Thomas kissed the bridge of his nose, and then his mouth. Thomas’ kisses were hearth fires, the cosy reassurance of belonging, of homecoming. James wanted to sit by those fires forever, the crackle of burning wood in his ears, the smoke of it in his lungs. But James had lost that home once, and he had found that there were other things in the treacherous wilderness that could be just as beautiful, and amidst wars and storms, mutinies and betrayals, he had stumbled upon something—some _one_ —that had kept him safe, sheltered him through chaos, guided him through shadows.

Even if that someone had pointed a gun at him too, in the end.

“You’ll be all right,” Thomas said, leaning his forehead against James’. “Do you want me to be there?”

“I’d rather deal with him alone,” James said.

“I understand,” Thomas said, stepping back, unbuttoning his waistcoat. “And I’ll understand too if you spend the night with him.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” James said, his hands beginning to twitch at his sides.

Thomas laughed. “My love. I wish you could _see_ the way you looked when I came home from the printer’s and you told me I’d just missed Mr Silver’s unexpected visit. It’s the way you look just before you’re about to throw _me_ against a wall, except you weren’t looking at me, but at the wall you had probably wanted to throw Mr Silver against.”

James huffed, his eyes tracing Thomas’ pink lips. “I want to throw you against a wall now.”

“You ought to conserve your energy, my dear,” Thomas said, and James surged against him anyway, kissed him breathless, and _fuck_ this was a bad idea when Silver might be here any moment but Christ, he loved Thomas, his shrewd eyes and knowing smile, how Thomas illuminated all the dark corners of James’ heart.

He was so lost in the heat of Thomas’ mouth that it took him a while to hear the hear the distant raps at the front door and Silver’s shouting. He wrenched himself away from Thomas, and Thomas adjusted James’ neckcloth for him, before giving James an encouraging shove.

James went downstairs. He opened the door. And then he immediately regretted not having a drink first.

“Can I come in?” Silver asked. “It’s cold out here.” His hair streamed behind him.

James gestured with his hand, and Silver put his crutch forward, entering the house.

James closed the door.

“So, where’s everybody else?” Silver said, surveying the drawing room, his jaw tense.

“You mean Madi and Thomas?” James asked. “They’re upstairs.”

“And the children?”

“They’re asleep. Upstairs.”

“How many?” Silver asked.

“Six,” James said. “You saw all of them earlier. Daniel, Simon, Theodore, Christopher, Nicholas, and Ernest.” He recalled them by the order he had first brought them to the house. 

“Let me get this straight,” Silver said, holding up a broad palm. “You’re running what appears to be a very very small home for boys.”

“A real home,” James said. “That’s what we’re trying to provide. I started going into the Almshouse and teaching children there. Some of them were there with their families, but some were orphans. The conditions in the Almshouse aren’t ideal. Thomas and Madi and I decided we wanted to take children in. But only as many as we were certain we would be able to look after properly. We may be able to take more than six, but not many more. We’re not trying to run an institution, we’re trying to ensure those boys feel they have a family. I do most of the teaching and cooking, because Madi is writing her novels and Thomas still has his work with the books and the gazette.”

Silver sat down on the plush armchair and mulled over this, his fingers at his temple. “Why?”

“I can’t speak for Madi or Thomas,” James said. “But I… wanted children. And when I saw Daniel—he was the first we took in—I just… He’s so bright. And talkative. Struck up conversation with me every time I was in the Almshouse. I lost my parents too, and if it wasn’t for my grandfather, and then Hennessey after that… I’m not sure I’d be here now. And I know you were lying about your St. John’s Home for Poor Orphan Boys, but. I just wanted to counter some of the unending horrors in this world. For six children. It doesn’t seem like much, but, you know—and I didn’t expect this before I started—I genuinely feel as if I have a purpose again. I know it sounds absurd. I had a war, a revolution. And now I have six children. But…” He shrugged.

Silver gazed up at him. “I wasn’t lying about the home for boys,” Silver said. “I didn’t spend a great deal of time there, but I was there. And it was _fucking_ awful.” He looked away, as if it overwhelmed him to speak of it so honestly.

James pulled up a wooden chair opposite Silver and sat down too. “Do you think what I’m doing here is fucking awful?” James said.

“No,” Silver said, softly. He looked at James, his eyes an overcast sky. “I… I’m glad to see what you’re doing. And I’m glad to see you again.”

James had never wanted to examine his anger over Silver too closely. It seethed white within him when he thought about Silver’s actions, yes, but the anger was just the tip of something profound, the foam on the very surface of a wave—underneath it churned a vast sea of longing. And he felt the lull of it now, the steady crash of it against his ribcage.

“I’m glad to see you too,” he said.

“I dream of you all the time,” Silver said, sprawling back in his chair, looking at the flames that danced in the fireplace. “Just… memories of you, all crushed and mixed together like some kind of drug. In my dreams we are still as we were once. As close as two people can get without fucking.”

Something leapt in James’ chest, like a sleek dolphin that jumped from the water.

“I told Madi that I’d unmade Flint,” Silver carried on. “I told her that as we reached Savannah, I saw someone who wasn’t the man I had come to know at all. But I was wrong. I was _wrong_. The more I dreamt of you, the more I realised. All along you had been there. James. McGraw. Flint wasn’t the one who had fenced with me on that clifftop. I went back there every day after I sent you to Savannah, and I sat and looked at the ocean and thought of you. Thought of you asking if I could see Nassau. But it was no wonder I couldn’t see Nassau in the distance. I didn’t see you when you were right in front of me, James. It was like you’d opened the door and invited me in and I’d just been standing there on the doorstep the whole time like a fucking idiot.”

James’ gaze caressed the dark mantle of Silver’s hair, the broken-glass despair in Silver’s eyes. “The door’s still open,” he said. “It’ll always be open for you.” He leaned forward and put his hand on Silver’s knee. “You opened it first, remember?”

Silver’s face crumpled. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just wanted you and Madi to live, and I didn’t care what I had to do to make that happen, and I couldn’t see any other way. I’d never loved anybody so much as I love the two of you and I just…” A sob rose in his throat.

“Say that again,” James said, finding he couldn’t breath until he heard those words once more.

“I love _you_. James. Flint. McGraw. Every part of you that you have shown to me, I have loved, and loved, and _loved_. I am _exhausted_ by how much I love you. It’s been two years and I’ve missed you every single day and I’m so. Fucking. Tired.” Silver suddenly grabbed James’ arm and pulled James fiercely towards him, so that James fell to his knees before Silver.

A howl of anguish ripped from Silver’s throat. He butted his head against James’ shoulder twice and fell still, weeping.

James slipped his fingers into Silver’s curls, the thick forest of them like the dark trees that had surrounded them when he had first told Silver about Thomas, and he lifted them so he could whisper into Silver’s ear, “I love you too. I love you too. I love you too.”

Over and over again.

When Silver stopped shaking, James kissed his ear, and then his neck, the warm secret of Silver’s pulse thrilling underneath his lips. “Come to bed with me,” he murmured, and Silver raised his head from James’ shoulder and looked at James with damp eyes.

James held Silver’s hand and led him upstairs, the oil lamp in his other hand. Silver was loud with this crutch, and James hoped he would not wake any of the boys. They made it to James’ room, and James shut the door and locked it.

Silver sat down on the bed and kicked his boots off, and James went to him, kneeling over him, and kissed him. Silver’s lips yielded to him, and though it was the first time he had ever kissed Silver’s mouth, he had thought of it so many times, pictured it so often in his mind that it felt familiar, like clashing swords, like drinking and talking in the dark. Like trusting Silver. It was easy. He could do it for the rest of his life.

They parted for breath, and James touched the feather pendant on Silver’s neck. “Do you know how we figured out that it was you who had stolen the page?” he said.

Silver blinked. “No, I guess I thought it was only a matter of time before Gates remembered he hadn’t searched me.”

“I put a white feather in my drawer,” James said. “So I’d know if it had been disturbed. I found the feather on the floor, and I knew the thief must have come back to try and find out what he’d stolen. I deduced that it must have been somebody who was a part of our crew. That was when Gates remembered.”

“Oh,” Silver said. “Clever, that.”

James snorted, and kissed Silver. “Yes, I am rather,” he said. “I picked up the feather, and I turned it over in my hand, wondering who it was who had stolen the page from. Wondering who my thief was. What kind of man would dare steal from Captain Flint.”

“I didn’t really have any idea just how scary you were,” Silver said, his fingers tugging at strands of hair on James’ nape.

“You must have heard the stories,” James said.

“Stories are just stories, aren’t they?” Silver said. “They say all sorts of things that aren’t true.” 

“And then you discovered they were true,” James said. “That I was as terrifying as they say.”

“ _More_ terrifying,” Silver said. “None of the stories could have prepared me for the way I felt around you. The way I _feel_. If you really were a dragon, I would let you devour me. That’s the most terrifying thing. How I looked at you and I didn’t want to run. I said I wanted freedom from you. But all the unending horrors in the world that I have encountered, they all have pleasant facades. They lure you in with promises of sanctuary and refuge and love, and then they blow out the candles and their claws come out. But you. You were the first thing in my life that _announced_ itself as a horror, promised nothing but darkness, and then revealed itself to be so much more. So filled with light that I saw myself as the only shadow in contrast. I didn’t want freedom from you.” He swept back the locks of hair that hung in James’ face. “I wanted freedom from _myself_. You were right. There is freedom in the dark, and I need you—I _need_ you to illuminate me so that I don’t feel like a shadow of a person anymore.”

He untied the knot of James’ cravat and kissed James’ jaw.

“You are not a shadow,” James asserted, grasping the front of Silver’s shirt. “You were the brightest thing to come into my life in a decade. My whole world was white with grief, and you were the prism that made it full of colour again. Every hue of light I saw, I saw it through you.” He kissed Silver’s mouth hard, his tongue slipping into Silver’s mouth, his hand under Silver’s shirt. He ground down into Silver’s lap, and they bit their gasps from each other’s lips. “You are as necessary to me as that page was to the log. You have always been necessary to me. I couldn’t have done any of it without you.”

“You could have done so much _more_ without me,” Silver said, his eyes glimmering, his hand insinuating itself between them, his palm rubbing against the crotch of James’ breeches. James shivered. “I took it all away from you.”

“I would have died ten times over if not for you,” James said. He pulled off his shirt and tossed it aside, and clutched Silver’s shoulder, rocking down into Silver’s touch. “You gave so much to me. You went about it the wrong way, but so many have taken so much from me in my life. You’re one of the few who have given me as much, and more, in return. I am reaping the fruits you’ve sown, and they are luscious and _bountiful_. And you know me, I always think the ends justify the means, don’t I?” 

He tugged on the pendant of Silver’s necklace, pulling him forward for another kiss, and Silver gripped his waist and suddenly he was flipped onto his back on the bed, Silver hovering over him, dragging James’ breeches down before getting rid of his own trousers and shirt. Silver was fucking breathtaking, the ripples of his muscle like the swirl of molten gold in the lamplight, and he was looking at _James_ as if James was the treasure, which was, frankly, ridiculous.

“I want you,” Silver said. “Will you let me have you?”

“You’ve always had me,” James said, stroking his thumb over Silver’s cheekbone.

“I thought… because of Thomas…”

“You _still_ haven’t mastered the art of watching two points in space at the same time, have you?” James said. “I’ve always known how.” 

Silver kissed him, his hair falling like a veil into James’ face. James reached down for Silver’s cock, and felt it hot and thick in his hand, like the hilt of a sword that had been warmed in the Caribbean sun. Silver moaned into James’ mouth as James’ hand slid up and down his cock, and James caught Silver’s lip between his teeth and worried it red while Silver thrust into his fist.

“The oil is in the bedside drawer,” James said. Silver leaned back and rummaged for it, allowing James the opportunity to admire the carved lines of muscle on Silver’s torso, like a bronze sculpture that James had once had the privilege to see in the private collection of one of Thomas and Miranda’s friends. It was not till this moment that James understood how Pygmalion had fallen in love with his statue. If James had a statue that looked like this, he would wish it were alive too.

But Silver _was_ alive, and the play of his muscles as he moved and breathed in the flickering light was like every sublime sunset James had ever witnessed blended together, every time streaks of cloud in the sky had been transformed into dunes of sand by the orange glow and the sun had made a golden path across the smouldering ridges of the sea. None of those sunsets had ever been so glorious as this, and _God_ , he was so hard, and he needed Silver inside him _now_.

Silver finally found the oil, and he coated his fingers in it and pressed them into James, and James was thankful he had been fucked just yesterday because Silver was fumbling and impatient, but James knew how to relax into it. Silver’s fingers were so _big_ , Jesus Christ—James felt so full already, so open, panting and writhing underneath Silver with his legs spread, and Silver’s eyes were looking straight into his and they were so _blue_ and James was back in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight and he didn’t ever want to come back ashore.

Silver pulled his fingers out and James felt himself clenching down helplessly on nothing, wanting Silver to give him everything, and then Silver was gripping his thighs and pushing into him, slowly, slowly, and James couldn’t _do_ this, he just couldn’t. It was so intense and he had wanted Silver for so _long_ , it was too much to finally have him. Silver had always been too much, and now Silver was there, buried inside him, and they were more connected than they had ever been, they were as connected as they always should have been, inseparable. No daylight between them.

It was as if a piece of him had been torn from him, like a page from a book, and now it had been returned.

He whimpered, throwing his head back. Silver fitted so well inside him, he felt so _known_. What was it he had said once? Oh yes—he was transparent to Silver. He truly _felt_ it now, felt that Silver could see every organ inside him, every artery and sinew and bone. He felt so vulnerable and so _good_.

Silver drove into him, his fingers dipping into the shallow of the long scar down his chest, and James gasped. “That was Singleton, wasn’t it?” Silver said, and James breathed _yes_ , and Silver rubbed his thumb over the puckered scar on his shoulder. “Dufresne,” he muttered.

“You already stomped the bastard’s head in,” James said. “Now just _fuck_ me, will you?”

“I’ve seen you without your shirt on before now,” Silver said. “But I’ve never had the chance to appreciate it.” He smoothed his hand down the plane of James’ chest and rolled James’ nipple between his fingers, and James swore and bucked. Silver hummed. “You’re so beautiful. Captain.”

Pleasure pooled in James’ belly like a coil of rope. He wasn’t anybody’s captain, now, but he didn’t protest. He liked hearing Silver address him that way, as if they were in the cabin of the _Walrus_ again, and the ship creaked around them, the sea a constant, calming rhythm in the background. Silver moved inside him the way the sea moved, so deeply that Silver might dissolve into him and seawater would run inside his veins forever more.

His hands traversed the slope of Silver’s back, nails scratching all the way down, and Silver groaned and rammed into him, brutal and fast, and James cried out in response. He sunk his fingers into the flesh of Silver’s arse and Silver kissed his neck, sucking and biting vengefully. James was sure there would be bruises, and just imagining them blooming on his neck, a garden of roses that would be hidden under his cravat tomorrow, made him content.

His thighs began to ache, but it was an ache he loved to endure, just like the sweet burn of Silver plunging into him. Apparently satisfied with the marks he had left on James’ neck, Silver raised his head and his blue eyes roamed over James once more, and under the heat of their gaze, James felt himself flush all over. He jerked his own cock as Silver watched and praised him, murmuring, “God, yes, Captain, look at you, oh Christ, I can’t believe I get to see this, I can’t believe this isn’t a dream.”

And all the while Silver fucked him so _well_ , and Silver’s voice wrapped around him like another hand on his cock, rough and tender at the same time, and he drowned in the fathomless sea of Silver’s eyes, the same sea of desire that had churned inside James for the past three years ever since he first threw Silver against the rocks in the Wrecks. The rope of pleasure in his belly pulled taut and he came, spilling onto himself.

He urged Silver closer to him then, one hand gripping Silver’s arse and another tangled in Silver’s hair as he whispered praises in Silver’s ear in his turn. “I dreamt of you too,” he said. “I dreamt of you, but you’re even lovelier than anything I’ve ever dreamt. I’m so glad you came back to me, John. Please, _fuck_ , you’re so beautiful, please come inside me, John, come inside me.”

Silver gasped and whined, his hips manic with movement, his hands squeezing James’ thighs, and then he shoved deep into James and stilled. James moaned, feeling the wet throb of Silver’s cock inside him. He sucked a long, lazy kiss into Silver’s shoulder until Silver withdrew and slumped in a heap to James’ right.

They lay there in silence, but James did not want to drift off to sleep just yet. This was one of the best nights of his life, and he didn’t want it to end. He wound one of Silver’s curls around his finger, pressing soft kisses onto Silver’s arm, the muscle hard under his lips. In answer, Silver’s fingers brushed through the fuzz of hair on James’ chest.

“So, how did you find us?” he asked, the question suddenly occurring to him again. “You never got to say.”

“Madi’s book,” Silver said. “It eventually made its way to Nassau. I read it. I sent a letter to the publisher in London to enquire after the author’s whereabouts. I got a letter back saying that the manuscript had come to him by way of a book-seller and printer named Thomas Barlow, who lived in Boston, Massachusetts. I had someone come to Boston to find Thomas’ book-shop and follow him home. That’s how I got the address.”

“You still love her too, don’t you?” James asked.

Silver didn’t say anything. He just stroked his fingers along James’ sternum. And then he said, “I don’t know what I can do about it. She doesn’t want to see me, does she?”

James chewed his lip in thought, and then he found he could not bear it anymore. 

He wiped himself with his shirt and pulled on his breeches. “Stay here,” he told Silver. He picked up the lamp, ignoring Silver’s expression of panic because he trusted Silver to listen, and then he padded out of the room and down the corridor.

He knocked on the door of Madi’s room.

Madi opened the door with a frown and let him in, quickly closing the door behind him. Her gaze took in his shirtless state, his dishevelled hair, and the bruises on his neck. “What are you doing here?” she hissed. Her hand reached out and touched his neck. “I see you must have enjoyed yourself.” Something flashed through her eyes, almost like anger.

But James knew well what might lie beneath that anger.

“I know you still love him,” James said, clasping Madi’s hands. “ _You_ know you still love him. And he still loves you. You want him. You want it to be your neck that he kisses.” Madi’s lip quivered. “You want to be held by him just as he held me tonight.” Madi’s face scrunched up in distress. “And I know his betrayal cut you deep. I know you are going to have a hard time trusting him again. And I wouldn’t think of asking you to try, except for the fact that you wrote that book. Which I read. Which he read. Which half the _world_ read and loved, because they saw something true in it. And in your book, the princess forgives her errant lover, in the end. Doesn’t she?”

Tears ran down Madi’s cheeks. “She does.”

James thumbed at those tears. “You want to forgive him,” he said. “You wanted him to come find us. You wanted to give him hope that he might be forgiven, or you wouldn’t have written that.”

“I know,” Madi said. “But… he was the first person I ever fell in love with, and he _hurt_ me so terribly. Perhaps I am not meant to forgive him. Perhaps I am meant to find someone else.”

“You’re not _meant_ to do anything,” James said. “I know you were born to wear your people’s crown, and you spent your childhood preparing for it. Thinking that was what you were meant for. But here you are now, in Boston, living with a former pirate and a former English lord and a half-dozen ophan boys, writing _novels_. You have followed your heart, and it has led you this far. What does your heart tell you now?”

Madi’s eyes shimmered as she looked up at James, and then they focused with an ardent lucidity: a resolution. “I want to see him,” she said. “I have missed him with all my heart. I don’t know how I can grow to trust him again, but I know you trust him, and I trust _you_.”

“I think we can start with that, don’t you?” James said. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and planted a kiss on each of her cheeks.

She gulped. “You _smell_ like him,” she said.

“Come with me,” he said, smiling and taking her hand. He led her back down the hallway, and then they were standing in the doorway to James’ room, where Silver was lying on the bed amidst rumpled sheets, still stark naked.

 _Shit_ , James probably should have told Silver to put his trousers back on first.

But then Silver and Madi were staring at each other, and Madi’s breathing was ragged with sobs. Silver sat up, and Madi approached the bed and reached for him first, her hand cupping his cheek, and he turned into her touch, nuzzling her palm.

“I hate that you are still so beautiful,” she said, her other hand trailing down his chest. “I cannot look at you without wanting you.” 

“I’m sorry,” Silver said, burrowing his head into the flowing waist of her nightdress. “I’m sorry I—”

“Shh,” Madi interrupted him, grasping his hair. “It is too late in the night for apologies. Leave them for the morning.” She crawled into the bed, straddling Silver, and she kissed him. James let himself look at them, let himself look at the way their noses bumped, the way Madi clutched Silver’s face to hers, the way Silver’s hands came to rest on the small of Madi’s back, the way both their shoulders quaked as they kissed.

And then Madi lay down and Silver knelt between her legs, and James thought he might have to take the guest room instead, but then Madi looked at him. He had not been forgotten at all. “Stay?” she asked. “If you do not mind.”

He did not mind. He got into bed on the other side and held Madi’s hand while Silver rucked up the hem of Madi’s nightdress and lowered his head to the place between her thighs.

Madi’s moans filled the air, and James admired the undulating pools of shadow in Silver’s back, the gorgeous flex of Silver’s shoulders.

When they were done, Silver lay between James and Madi, and James murmured to him, “I think you’re learning how to watch two points in space at the same time.”

* * *

That was how Thomas found them before daybreak, the three of them in James’ bed.

“James, you need to get up and make breakfast,” Thomas said. He poked James’ shoulder and yawned. “And you all need to get into separate beds before the boys wake up.”

James opened his eyes and squinted up at his husband. In the muted gold light on the edge of dawn, Thomas’ flaxen hair looked like a halo. “G’morning,” James said, and chased Thomas’ hand so he could give it a kiss.

“Is your Mr Silver going to stay?” Thomas asked, and James could see that he was casting his gaze speculatively along Silver’s naked form.

“I hope so,” James replied. “I think so.”

“I certainly hope so too,” Thomas said, and he actually _licked his lip_. James snorted.

“I’m staying,” Silver mumbled, rolling onto his side and slinging one arm over James, hugging him close. “You can’t make me leave.”

“The boys might make you leave,” James said. “Daniel thinks you’re an ‘unsavoury character’ and all.”

“ _I_ might make you leave,” Madi said, from the other side of Silver, her voice raspy with sleep. “I haven’t made my mind up yet.” She sounded teasing, but Silver made a pitiful noise and clung tighter to James.

“I never wanted you to leave,” James pointed out.

“Yes, I do recall you were the one who made _James_ leave, the last time,” Thomas remarked.

James watched as Silver actually opened his eyes and looked up at Thomas, meeting him for the first time since he heard the name over two years ago, and Silver’s eyes widened, and then narrowed. 

James wasn’t really sure, but he thought perhaps Silver was going to have to learn to watch three points in space at the same time. Perhaps they would all have to learn.

He was looking forward to the challenge.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Overture' by Sleeping At Last.
> 
> Comments are really appreciated! <3 Come find me on [tumblr](http://reluming.tumblr.com/) where I'll never get over Black Sails.


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